In our office, in our gardens, and in our homes — real-life adventures from the Berkshires and beyond.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Craft Blogs Shall Rule The World

I started knitting when my youngest son was a baby, and he is now almost 10 years old. I learned in a tiny, dusty knitting shop, and basically, I was taught how to knit and how to purl. Anything more complicated than that and the cranky owner would take my garment out of my hands and sigh, "Let me fix this," alerting me to the fact that I was TERRIBLE and would never amount to anything as a knitter. I was so terrified of making a huge mistake that I never asked to learn how to fix things for myself and resigned myself to handing over my dropped stitches, pattern instructions, and twisted rows to anyone who looked smarter than I was.

This was crazy, I thought . . . that I could go to this Web site and watch someone pick up stitches, or fix a dropped stitch, or even make a cable. My knitting education picked up at a sizzling pace. And then someone said to me, "Haven't you heard of the Yarn Harlot?" More amazement. She was so funny! And a knitter. Like an addiction to a controlled substance, this led to hours of trolling around on the InterWeb looking for anything with "knitter" or "stitch" or "yarn" in the title or tags. (This was obviously before I started working. Of course I would never do this in my office . . . with nobody looking . . . and pretend it was work. . . .)

This makes me appreciate that so many of our craft authors are bloggers. While I love it that so many people count on our books for their information, sometimes you just need the immediacy of clicking "search" to open up new horizons in your own craft. Our authors blog about lambs, chickens, sheep, craft beers and brewing, and mixology. . . oh and knitting. I hope you'll check out these blogs and open up some new worlds in your life. And the books aren't bad, either.